With 1,500 to 2,000 speakers it is the second largest of all Sami languages. It is reported that the number of native speakers is in sharp decline among the younger generations. The language has, however, been standardised in 1983 and elaborately cultivated ever since.

Lule Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and some Estonian dialects, has a negative verb. In Lule Sami, the negative verb conjugates according to tense (past and non-past), mood (indicative and imperative), person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number (singular, dual and plural).

The orthography used for Lule Sámi is written using an extended form of the Latin script. There are a few special characters: á (a-acute), ń (n-acute), and å (a-ring). Traditionally, the character n-acute (Ń/ń) has been used to represent the [ŋ] sound, found, for example, in the English word "song". In place of n-acute (found in Unicode, but not in Latin-1 or traditional Nordic keyboards), many have used ñ or even ng. In modern orthography, such as in the official publications of the Swedish government and the recently published translation of the New Testament, it is usually replaced with ŋ, in accordance with the orthography of many other Sami languages.